School has warm welcome for new Torah

JEFF GRANIT staff Rabbi Yisroel Kellner, founder of Shalom Torah Academy, and A. Joseph Stern, president, celebrate the arrival of a Torah at the Marlboro school as students dance around them in the parking lot.

Students, families and

staff are thrilled with

arrival of sacred scroll

BY TALI ISRAELI

Staff Writer

In a celebration that Rabbi Leeli Lapa described as magical and spiritual, the Shalom Torah Academy, Marlboro, welcomed its new Torah into the building last week.

Clockwise from top left — Students at Shalom Torah Academy, Marlboro, celebrate with a procession around a float that carries a new Torah to the school. Rabbi Heshy Schwartz (c) reads from the Torah after it was brought into the academy. Tuvie Davis, 16, 11th grade, and Chaim Fridmann, 16, also 11th grade, help welcome the Torah. The Torah is hand-written and contains the five books of Moses.

According to Risa Gold, the school’s day-care supervisor and outreach coordinator, the Torah was started at the school in December 2003. The Torah contains the five books of Moses.

PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT staff

Shalom Torah Academy’s male students and their fathers wrote the Torah’s first Hebrew letters before the scroll was sent to Israel to be completed. On Sept. 18 the students and their fathers were able to put the final touches on the Torah by writing in its last letters. Gold explained that every letter is hand drawn and must be written perfectly or it is not done properly.

Gold said she believes every Jewish male should have the opportunity during his lifetime to write in a Torah. However, she said this opportunity is very rare, and so it was a privilege and an honor for the students who participated in the Torah writing.

On Sept. 19, Shalom Torah Academy, Amboy Road, held a procession to escort its new Torah into the building. The celebration was attended by the students, their families, the faculty, the school’s board of trustees, middle school students from Yoshira Tifereth Naftali-Chofetz Chaim in Old Bridge, and Shalom Torah Academy’s sister campus in East Windsor, Mercer County.

Lapa said, “As soon as the procession began it took on a life of its own. The kids just became so excited and so enthused about the welcoming of the Torah into the school.”

The parade included decorations, dancing and what Gold called an awe-inspiring celebration. She said the parade lasted outside of the school for about an hour and there was so much excitement that you could see the joy in every child’s face.

“The day was a gift. You could see that it meant something for everyone. It was just wonderful and uplifting,” Gold added.

Lapa said the Torah will be used on holidays, on Rosh Chodesh (the celebration of each new Jewish month) and for other special occasions.

Gold said the celebration was a crowning moment for the rabbi and an historic event for the people who worked to make Shalom Torah Academy possible.

Lapa said that during the celebration “everybody just felt a magic, a uniqueness, a certain inspiration or felt something alive or spiritual occurring ... (Everyone) became alive with an energy I’ve never seen before.”